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Friday, September 9, 2016

Thierry Meyssan — China is setting up the menu for Global Financial Order

During the first Annual Summit organized by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) in Beijing, China has shown her intention to take over the global leadership in infrastructure investment. By the end of this year, AIIB would have more than 100 members, making it the first lending institution in multilateral loans in history, under the control of the most important emerging countries. Yet, it is expected that she makes the decision of dropping off the Dollar, as it is the only way to break away from US hegemony in international finance.

This is an especially bold move since it is taking on only US hegemony and Western neoliberal dominance, but also "the masters of the universe" that control global finance. Get ready for the fireworks. Some sparks have already begun to fly.

USD, EUR, JPY, GBP, CAD, AUD, SGD, CHF, SEK, DKK, NOK, HKD are all accepted in China's Alipay and the transaction costs are minimal. I bought some equipment from China yesterday and asked if I could pay with offshore yuan that I have left over from investments and dividends. And the answer was "Sorry" simply because Chinese government doesn't want Alipay to use it yet because they want to retain control over the value and cross border movements. JP Morgan here has the 2016 rules laid out succinctly. You can see the currency isn't really being encouraged by the Chinese for wide use at this time.

It appears the Chinese want more official use, but not free use of the RMB. They want people to use the currency for the benefit of China but not to hurt.

When Tanzania hired a state owned Chinese contractor to build their railroad recently, the Chinese required payment in USD, not CNY. The Tanzanians have USD to pay from oil revenue. This is typical Chinese policy, do what is best for the transaction. Making Tanzania pay in Yuan if they don't have a Yuan surplus would be shooting themselves in the foot. The US and Europe have lots of holes in their feet.

Seems reasonable to think development banks should only make loans to countries in currencies that the countries can reasonably pay back.

It might bruise egos in Washington. China can help subvert US government sanctions and the Chinese aren't responsive to threats of cutting off Chinese banking system. Chinese banks have branches and accounts in the US banks while doing business with Iran, Libya and other sanctioned governments. That tells me that sanctions are a political tool, not really a legal tool in the way prosecutorial discretion is exercised. Europe could as easily reject fines and penalties levied on their banks for violating US sanctions by tit-for-tat measures. They simply chose not to.

Until such time as China can get oil denominated in Yuan, which it got Russia to agree to, it needs USD for oil purchases.

Then there was the supposed agreement Obama reached with Xi over the Paris Climate Change agreement. Obama crowed, but China just sucker-punched the US where the sun don't shine.

Now China will have even more reason to deny the US the rare earths it needs for its vital military, medical, and commercial techs. During Q1 of Obama's first term, while the Tea-partiers were searching Walmart for straw hats and lawn chairs during February, China was using its treasury securities profits to scarf up the remaining rare earth mines and ores around the world, Chile, Africa (where it built one country's infrastructure for a 2% loan). It nabbed 95% of the supply. In 2013, China put a quota on rare earths that can be exported, shocking the global market. It said it needed them for domestic consumption.

Understand that having the ores is not enough. You have to have the scientists and technicians who know how to do Stage Four. Stage One is mining the ore. it takes 40 tons of ore to create the 2.5 Kilo magnets for one wind turbine. ONE. Got that? Hillary made the hilarious claim the other day that she was going to build 500 million solar panels in the next 10 years as Prez. With what? Her husband put the US dominance in rare earths production out of commish in 1994 when he refused to help out Molycorp, the only company in the US that could produce Stages One through Four. Molycorp reigned in the early 80s. The scientists who knew Stage Four joined other firms and now we don't have the technical prowess. Stage Four is as much an art as a science. China has the integrated vertical biz now. American companies have had to move to China to make solar panels; however, but since 2013 those exports back to the US are now restricted.

Obama just gave them permission to shut the supply off. Fucking asshole does not understand the consequences of his actions. I'm sure China doesn't care about housing and consumer energy prices, but it will cripple the US military.

Hillary Clinton pledges half a billion solar panels for US if she wins officehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/27/hillary-clinton-pledges-half-a-billion-solar-panels-for-us-if-she-wins-office

Jack Lifton, the only source you should listen to on rare earths. Jack Lifton: North America Doesn't Need China's Rare Earths. A 2010 interview in which he issued another warning. Who listens? GET THE BACKGROUND.http://www.theaureport.com/pub/na/jack-lifton-north-america-doesnt-need-chinas-rare-earths

Why? That would be strategically unsound. The global shock would spur development elsewhere, and possibly render them irrelevant. They have to create 100% dependence first. The Chinese consider rash actions like that beneath them and shaming.

Now the west has an excess of useless people in the FIRE sector who only know how to souffle paper around, because "we" (collectively) have come to confuse paper with real wealth. Industrial and operations knowledge that would take decades to gain has been lost in order to make up that bonus for the private equity CEO whose job consisted in selling or moving a corporation to China.

The West is playing a game completely different than China, and losing while thinking they are winning, because both operate on different assumptions on what matters. Chinese authorities don't believe paper is wealth, paper is a bureaucratic tool to facilitate the gathering of real wealth (which is, ultimately, knowledge, above everything else).

In the UK we had the mighty ICI until a private equity fund bought it, asset striped it, sold parts off, so now it is no more.

Then a small Japanese company bought Pilkington's Glass, which had just invented self cleaning glass, great for tall buildings.

The small Japanese glass company would have raised millions in massive loans to buy Pilkington's, but it didn't matter who owned it according the New Labour. The Pilkington's directors made their millions.

The ruling elite have made fortunes out of wrecking Western industries. But all modern life is due to industry and technology, that's where the real money is, and that's where the future is.

Ever Ready had a fantastic brand name and was a world leading battery manufacturer, then Lord Hanson bought it, asset striped it, sold off it's R&D division, and Margaret Thatcher gave him a knighthood for superb services rendered to the UK.

But left to the free market, a handful of people make a packet while our modern life gets destroyed.

All of these companies could have been Western world leaders.

Paul Craig Roberts is right, many of the people in the One Percent should go on trial for treason.

Thanks. It comes down to national resources. What have you got? And do you have the educated citizens to design, develop, and manage them?

Quite apart from the current journalistic buffoonery on climate science spouting in papers by climate change activist journalists who have zero scientific training*, the issue of resources is 100% real in order to accomplish what the la-dee-dah goals are.

In 2007, Google put their full faith and bank account behind its RE-C project, which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. It persisted until 2011, when it abandoned the project because they determined it couldn't be done. Two Stanford PhDs(aerospace engineering, applied physics) hired as Google engineers wrote up their findings and could not get the NYT, et al, to publish it. They presented their findings at the IEEE, and not one single paper of record published a thing about it. But the British tech paper did, The Register.

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineersWindmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs (there are two pages but you have to hunt for the second page)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/

The Register reported the two Google scientists' main points this way:

"Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”

Reread it. The majority of Americans have never heard this. Instead of using our USD to pay for promising young students to attend the top science universities in the country/world in the race to find new tech solutions—and build our future—we subsidize multi-nationals in their renewables quest. Hundreds of billions. $22 trillion showed up in investments dollars at Doha to play this scam. That’s why TPP and TTIP and TSIS were created. To protect those dollars, outside the jurisdiction of the US, and under the rubric of “climate change.” Save the Polar Bears!===========================

* 21 Harvard students and two Harvard professors can’t answer why it's warm in summer and cold in winter. All but 2 said it's because the earth is closer to the sun in summer and farther away in winter. Watch: http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=9 20 min.REVELATORY!!! At least watch the first three- five min.

* PROFESSOR Neil Comins paper: Sources of Misconceptions in Astronomy, present at the Third International Seminar on Misconceptions and Educational Strategies in Science and Mathematicshttps://physics.umaine.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/80/2012/11/Sources-of-misconceptions.pdfWe are educating out kids to be scientific idiots.http://umaine.edu/heavenly-errors/ for a list of some of the 1700 misconceptions that Comins found. This is basic science knowledge.

Thanks. It comes down to national resources. What have you got? And do you have the educated citizens to design, develop, and manage them?

Quite apart from the current journalistic buffoonery on climate science spouting in papers by climate change activist journalists who have zero scientific training*, the issue of resources is 100% real in order to accomplish what the la-dee-dah goals are.

In 2007, Google put their full faith and bank account behind its RE-C project, which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. It persisted until 2011, when it abandoned the project because they determined it couldn't be done. Two Stanford PhDs(aerospace engineering, applied physics) hired as Google engineers wrote up their findings and could not get the NYT, et al, to publish it. They presented their findings at the IEEE, and not one single paper of record published a thing about it. But the British tech paper did, The Register.

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineersWindmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs (there are two pages but you have to hunt for the second page)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/

The Register reported the two Google scientists' main points this way:

"Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”

Reread it. The majority of Americans have never heard this. Instead of using our USD to pay for promising young students to attend the top science universities in the country/world in the race to find new tech solutions—and build our future—we subsidize multi-nationals in their renewables quest. Hundreds of billions. $22 trillion showed up in investments dollars at Doha to play this scam. That’s why TPP and TTIP and TSIS were created. To protect those dollars, and outside the jurisdiction of the US and under the rubric of “climate change.” Save the Polar Bears!===========================

* 21 Harvard students and two Harvard professors can’t answer why it's warm in summer and cold in winter. All but 2 said it's because the earth is closer to the sun in summer and farther away in winter. Watch: http://www.learner.org/vod/vod_window.html?pid=9 20 min.REVELATORY!!! At least watch the first three- five min.

* PROFESSOR Neil Comins paper: Sources of Misconceptions in Astronomy, present at the Third International Seminar on Misconceptions and Educational Strategies in Science and Mathematicshttps://physics.umaine.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/80/2012/11/Sources-of-misconceptions.pdfWe are educating out kids to be scientific idiots.http://umaine.edu/heavenly-errors/ for a list of some of the 1700 misconceptions that Comins found. This is basic science knowledge.

"21 Harvard students and two Harvard professors can’t answer why it's warm in summer and cold in winter. All but 2 said it's because the earth is closer to the sun in summer and farther away in winter."

Even worse, probably 99 out of 100 do not know that 75% of all global warming occurs during arctic and antarctic winters (going from -32C to -24C, say).

CO2 only fully absorbs radiated (infrared) heat in the 15 micron band in the infrared, the N Band, with a lead-in of 13 microns to a fade-out around 18 microns. Any thermodynamic physics textbooks can show you that. For example, the 9 micron band is ~322K (120F). The 13 micron band is ~223K (-58F), a general average range of earth’s temperature.

The higher micron number is colder not hotter. I used 2897 as the Wien’s constant. 15 microns is ~193K, which is -80C or -112F. That’s where CO2 acts as greenhouse ‘blanket’ in the troposphere.

Helps to have a radiative physicist as a friend; he just shakes his head at the lack of basic physics knowledge on the part of so-called environmental "climate scientists" or ex-New Yorker writers like Bill McKibben, father of CO2 should be 350 PPM.

Nor do these grand pronouncers know that CO2 is higher in winter than summer. (I have an expensive CO2 meter in my house. Fascinating to watch it.) Everyone knows to cool beer so it doesn’t fizz all over, containing the CO2, anecdotal evidence.

"In 2007, Google put their full faith and bank account behind its RE-C project, which sought to enhance renewable technology to the point where it could produce energy more cheaply than coal. It persisted until 2011, when it abandoned the project because they determined it couldn't be done. Two Stanford PhDs(aerospace engineering, applied physics) hired as Google engineers wrote up their findings and could not get the NYT, et al, to publish it. They presented their findings at the IEEE, and not one single paper of record published a thing about it. But the British tech paper did, The Register.

Renewable energy 'simply WON'T WORK': Top Google engineersWindmills, solar, tidal - all a 'false hope', say Stanford PhDs (there are two pages but you have to hunt for the second page)http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/21/renewable_energy_simply_wont_work_google_renewables_engineers/

The Register reported the two Google scientists' main points this way:

"Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms - and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”

Reread it. The majority of Americans have never heard this. Instead of using our USD to pay for promising young students to attend the top science universities in the country/world in the race to find new tech solutions—and build our future—we subsidize multi-nationals in their renewables quest. Hundreds of billions. $22 trillion showed up in investments dollars at Doha to play this scam. That’s why TPP and TTIP and TSIS were created. To protect those dollars, and outside the jurisdiction of the US and under the rubric of “climate change.” Save the Polar Bears!"

My knowledge of physics is pretty limited outside of certain specifics of aircraft performance. However, you seem to be arguing "it can't be done!" for three paragraphs followed by one paragraph of "we need to put more effort into getting it done!".

Also, giving up after a four year "effort" doesn't really count as an effort, two Stanford PhDs or not.

Six, I think four years for the team (the Google team that did this was more than two people) to assess available resources is sufficient to determine whether you have a constraint or not. (They found only nuclear answered the problems.)

And I keep emphasizing that pollution is as great a concern as climate change. People alive today and their children growing up are much more likely to be adversely affect by pollution than climate change.

Our waste management solutions are in the Dark Ages. Dumping all our shit in pits and hoping it disintegrates in 10,000 years is barbaric. (Illegally) dumping Europe's radioactive waste in the oceans outside the Somalian coast harming their fishing waters (which precipitated the Somalian pirate issue)? That's a solution?

I have previously explained how the white idea of racial superiority was in place millennia before anyone had any notion of evolutions. That's why the founding fathers saw no contradiction between "all men being created equal" and slavery. Moreover, in the biblical view women are less equal as human than men. We are still dealing with these age-old ideas and their origin and persistence has nothing to with Darwin. Social Darwinism is just the latest iteration in rationalizing it, and it is as wrong as the previous rationalizations, as we now know from advances in life science in the 20th c.